On the occasion of Poetry Month, The duty, with the complicity of the Office of Poetic Affairs, gives a poem to read each week. For this second of five weeks: Shadowby Maya Cousineau Mollen.
Tormented by darkness
I prefer to keep quiet
Who will believe me?
choose to live
Despite this future
These omens of melancholy
Weight of this civilization
On what is still possible
So I raise slowly
Fragile, sacred and messenger
This present from the Great Eagle
Frail rampart of the inevitable
Feather of the Noble Ancestors
To receive it is an honor
Accepting it is meaningful
The one who walks in his shadow
Don’t hope for the light
But wants it all for love
For his unborn offspring
For his fighting people
For the childhood of others
For his own humanity
So when she leaves
The poet will close her eyes
In his stiff gray hand
Heaven’s Offering
Its dust will fly indifferent
Far from the announced Desolation
Avoidable ruins of madness
Of the thirst for a blind economy
All that’s left is writing
The passion for poetry
To lift weakly
In a gesture of despair
This ridiculous remige
Biography
Maya Cousineau Mollen is from the Innu nation and has 25 years of experience in the Aboriginal world. In 2019, she published Matricule 082 Breviary, at Hannenorak, for which she won the Indigenous Voices of Canada award (tied with Marie-Andrée Gill). In 2022, appears Children of the lichen, for which she received the 2022 Governor General’s Award for French-language poetry, making her the first Francophone Indigenous artist to win this award in the Poetry category. Maya currently holds the position of Project Manager – Relations with First Peoples at the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec, while continuing to give conferences throughout Quebec and Europe.
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